One Thing Said For Disclosure Is That It Is Sometimes A Bore

COMMENTARY

Judge Robert Bork, President Reagan`s nominee for the Supreme Court, owes the city of New Haven, Conn., $1,009.72 in taxes plus interest for two cars he bought in the early 1970s.

Kitty Dukakis, wife of the Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential contender Michael Dukakis, was hooked on amphetamine diet pills for 20 years but kicked the habit five years ago.

And that $20 travelers check, from funds raised for the contras, that Lt. Col. Oliver North cashed in a women`s hosiery shop was used to buy leotards for his two daughters, not a gift for his beauteous secretary Fawn Hall.

All of this information arrived via the news wires within just a few minutes the other afternoon and all of it, I`m sure, means something. But what?

The political struggle over the Bork nomination, the race for the White House in 1988 and the Iran-Contra fiasco are all serious and important public business and therefore also of significant news value. But somehow our weightiest and most fraught public issues seem more often and more regularly of late to get tangled up in trivialization and irrelevance.

It is no doubt a matter of some interest to the city of New Haven and of some curiosity generally (including to me) that Bork apparently failed to pay those taxes of $437.79 (plus interest now totaling $571.93) on a Buick station wagon and a Volvo while a professor at Yale Law School.

It is worthy of being reported, along with a New Haven official`s statement that Bork`s accountant has told him a check is in the mail, and certainly I have no quarrel with the reporting of the facts. But the simple public reporting of facts automatically and inevitably gives them a dimension and significance they otherwise would not carry.

Would Bork`s alleged local tax delinquency be news if he were not now on the public stage because of the looming battle over his nomination? Is the $1,009.72 of any more consequence to the folks in New Haven or anywhere else this week than it was two weeks ago? Is it relevant to his qualifications or to his prospects of winning confirmation?

I doubt it. It is, basically, a matter of mild curiosity. But it is the sort of thing we are getting more and more of.

The case of Kitty Dukakis is, I`m sure, of greater and wider interest. Last time around, the behavior of Geraldine Ferraro`s husband became a critical campaign issue. This year the 1988 campaign has already been shaped to considerable extent by Gary Hart`s personal life.

So we have Mrs. Dukakis, 50, announcing that she had been hooked on amphetamines, prescribed as diet pills when she was 19, for more than 20 years, and that five years ago she entered a Minnesota clinic to be treated for drug dependency.

The governor and his political aides insisted her disclosure had nothing to do with his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. But it seemed obvious that the Dukakises were seeking to head off any news scoop that might make it appear she was hiding something.

While Kitty Dukakis personal affliction and conquest of it are of human interest, her case, again, does not really have much relevance to her husband`s qualifications and prospects.

And then we have Ollie North and the TV hearings on the Iran-Contra affair. Here is a guy who was secretly directing the shipment of arms to Iran when his boss, the president, was proclaiming that he and the United States would never deal with terrorists. Here is a guy who was directing another secret operation aimed at funneling some of the profits from those arms sales to the Contras in Nicaragua when Congress had prohibited aid. And here we have a guy who has admitted lying to Congress and others.

And what do we get, along with the accounts of the really serious matters involved? We get questions about what North was up to when he cashed a Contra travelers check at a women`s hosiery shop. We get North responding that he never took a ``penny`` that wasn`t his and that he used the check and others as reimbursement for personal expenditures on the Contras` behalf.

He also expressed resentment about ``snickering`` speculation that he had engaged in ``hanky-panky`` with Fawn Hall and that he was buying a gift for her when in fact he was buying leotards for his daughters.

``Ollie North has been loyal to his wife since the day he married her,`` North told a watching world. Fine. That is honorable and admirable. It may even be of some interest to some people other than Mr. and Mrs. North. But what has it got to do with the Iran-Contra business?

There is something to be said for full disclosure, I guess. But one of the things to be said is that it can be a bore.